Marika

Your lighting is really sharp! It seems to bear resemblance of days gone by. Save those fingers from becoming nicotine stained! Then of course the tattoo tells a different story, but that's also a nice contrast.

It's a great presentation, the look on her face, the relaxed and confident pose, the wonderful tones all play together in making this extraordinary. I love it!

- Thomas

Thomas already said almost all what I also think, its a very sharp picture of a extreamly sharp idea!
Just perfect, like it much!
Armin Seeholzer

Agreed... excellent light. Just one quibble, I love her hand, but it looks a little dark on my monitor; I want to see just a bit more detail in it. Could be fine on the print, but the hand is so expressive, it's a shame to have lost the detail. Nicely done, Heli!

Heli, just fine on my monitor! The shot is great and the print must be wonderful. Nice tonality throughout and the hand does show good detail.

Curious about your lighting setup with this shot, as it worked out so well. What did you use for lights (type & watts)? Looks like maybe a key from above-right and a fill from lower left and a bit behind? Nice one, tim

If I was going to guess about the lighting, I'd guess that the key light is aimed such that most of it ends up behind her right hand. This is backlighting the hand a little bit. And with the black glove it does get a little too dark around the fingers. Maybe move the hand back toward the body a touch or jigger with the position of a reflector on the left side to bounce a little more light onto the hand and glove giving a bit more texture on the glove maybe.

Still, a zillion times better than I ever seem to do! Just something about a medium format camera for portrait work!

Or a "french inhale"!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_inhale

Thanks a lot for commenting.

This was very easy to print, I'm quite sure I developed this film in Pyrocat HD, 50 min, semi-stand (if someone is interested ).

Aah, and about the glove, it's just fine in the print...

"What did you use for lights (type & watts)? Looks like maybe a key from above-right and a fill from lower left and a bit behind?"

Sorry Tim, I missed your question... The key light is above right with a small softbox (elinchrome 500) and a fill only upper left-behind (SolaFlash 200). No other lights.

this is a great shot as well... although, I wish it would have been a different background for this composition of yours... you know just to create a different dimention for your subject... however, like I said it is a very well exuted shot...

regards,
tamas